Lithuania will build a fence at its border with Belarus, Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė confirmed on Friday.
“We think we could do that quickly enough, such a fence would cost approximately 41 million euros,” she told reporters on Friday.
This comes in addition to the barbed wire fence being installed on the border with Belarus by the Lithuanian military.
“The situation will be the following: we build a barbed wire barrier and a fence in parallel. When building the fence, we will use the barbed wire barrier and will have double protection,” she added.
Rustamas Liubajevas, the commander of the State Border Guard Service (VSAT), said that the barbed wire barrier could be fully installed within several months.
“We have been assured that the required quantity of that wire can be manufactured and we will install [the barrier] in stages. [...] Companies have assured us that they will be able to fully meet our needs in two or three months,” he added.
The aim was to build a physical fence along the entire border with Belarus, Bilotaitė said.
“The first stage is barbed wire fencing and the second stage is the construction of a physical fence,” the minister noted.
She claimed that the barrier would be built “in as short a period of time as possible”.
Lithuania shares a 678.8-kilometre long border with Belarus.
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